A widely traveled and wealthy artist known for his picturesque paintings, especially of Venice, Edward Darley Boit was born in Boston and died in Rome, Italy in 1915. (Some sources list 1916 as the death date). He studied at Harvard Law School and then studied art in Paris with Thomas Couture. He lived in Newport, Rhode Island from 1864 to 1871 and then went to Europe where he became an expatriate painter, living in France and Italy. However, he visited the United States nearly every year of his remaining life.

In Paris, he studied with Thomas Couture, and he exhibited at the Paris Salon in the 1870s and 1880s, and in 1914 at the Art Institute of Chicago. A close friend of John Singer Sargent, he and Sargent held several joint watercolor exhibitions in Boston and New York. In fact, Boit became more famous in art history for his association with Sargent than for his own work. In 1882, Sargent, living in Paris near the Boits, painted one of his best-known works, "Daughters of Edward Darley Boit".

Like Sargent, Boit and his wife, Mary Louisa, were prominent members of the American artistic community and therefore shared quite a bit of camaraderie. The painting of the children depicts them in the Boit's Paris apartment, 32, Avenue de Friedland.

Boit's papers are in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Sources include:
http://www.jssgallery.org/Paintings/Daughters_of_Edward_Darley_Boit.htm
Peter Hastings Falk (ed.), Who Was Who in American Art